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Nnanna

I have emerged. (What Next?)

One never knows how to start writing posts such as these; partly because the central story to my year is still in its early chapters (end of the year post I know). But here goes.

I was good at sales, heck I was one of the best within my division and organisation at what I did (and trust me that was pretty cutthroat) yet I knew I wanted to be done with that life. I reviewed my resume again (I do this every quarter) and sent out to every organisation I could contact and when I did get replies, no one wanted to give a largely self taught finance/sales guy who only had two projects to his name a dev/analyst gig.

Started pulling up like JR Smith after reading this tweet and post by Kiki Schirr

I turned my focus inwards and focused on getting a gig for the roles I was interested in within my organisation and signifying my interest in any possible vacancies for such roles. On the 10th of July, I had an interview that ended in me getting the move to develop products as I wanted (even though it was officially delayed by four months.)

2018 has overall been a meh year for me if we are keeping it a buck. The financial markets I dared play in had been crimson since January, Nigeria is still shit and I am sadly still here. I got fired from a relationship, got truckloads of rejection emails that questioned my esteem and abilities. Lets not forget the constant feeling of burnout and the panic attacks. It also did not help my troubles during the year that all my male role models were either distant, dealing with their own shit or both.

Okay maybe it’s not all as gloomy as it sounds because I had some victories and happy memories in the course of the year such as completing the Lagos Marathon in February and participating in an amateur round-robin football tournament, running my total 2017 distance in February and maintaining the trend of running a minimum of twice weekly for the whole year.

and taking a well deserved vacation in Canada and the US, switching jobs, seeing my friends Umar and Tunde get married, completing the zero to hero python course on udemy, getting a google scholarship on front end web development, and falling in love (thank you Brymo and Jack.)

** I also did not drink any alcohol from June 30 to September 9 — dunno if that counts as an achievement, but its my story and I’m keeping it.**

It’s easy to get carried away while reminiscing about the year and significant milestones that happened during the year but I also want to appreciate my new bosses who believed in my abilities to google search anything I do not know and gave me a fresh start in the process, the old bosses from whom I learnt how to push and be stubborn from, Jide and Okiki; light hearted brothers in this game, who have found a comical twist to every monumental fuckup happening here. Kevin, Umar, Adun, Bukunmi, Laide; family may be redefined as people whom we give the keys to annoy the shit out of us repeatedly and trust them to do a good job of it when the need arises, and Lade, with whom I want to ink this new chapter with.

Some regrets I have and checkboxes yet to be marked however include, not being closer to the path of achieving that doctorate and leaving this country for good, spending less time travelling and learning, but way too much time working(I only visited Kaduna, Abuja and Onitsha this year) I spent less time with family and I apologise to all my friends and loved ones for being failing to keep in touch regularly and being distant.

My Next Chapter

I officially resumed my new job on November 1 and turned 25 on the 23rd of November. It is eerily similar to the old role, yet significantly different. I know it’s still early days, but I feel like Ronaldo in Juventus waiting for his fist tap-in.